The primary objective of this proposal is the development of a system for analyzing the costs of long-term care according to patient characteristics and service departments in order to provide a sound basis for decisions by nursing home administrators, public decision makers, government administrators, and purchasers of nursing home services. Cost of collecting uniform cost data, given the variations in nursing homes across the nation, will be identified. The proposed research is divided into four interrelated phases. In performance of this grant, the grantee will: 1. Examine the methods of utilizing consistently defined data to determine the costs of providing care in long-term care facilities by service department (nursing/dietary, etc.) and by patient characteristics (heavy care, light care, etc.). (Phase I). 2. Apply the methodologies (or methodology) developed in Phase I to a representative set of delivery organizations to test usefulness to the administrator and government officials and to estimate the costs of collecting the data. (Phase II). 3. Determine the perceived benefits of the system developed and the ease of implementation. (Phases II, III and IV). 4. Test and validate the results obtained by submission of the instruments developed in a new set of selected facilities. (Phase IV).